News

In 1873, the physicist Ernst Abbe showed that a conventional optical microscope can never resolve details smaller than about half the wavelength of light — roughly 200 nanometres. Anything finer is blurred by diffraction. Super-resolution fluorescence microscopy later broke that limit, earning the 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. But it came at a cost: samples must be illuminated by a laser strong enough to excite the fluorescent probes, and strong light damages living cells and gradually bleaches the probes. Seeing clearly and observing for a long time became hard to achieve at once.

1. The price of super-resolution

Fluorescence super-resolution relies on external excitation: a laser activates the fluorescent probes, which then emit the signal that is recorded. Over time the probes bleach and the cells can be harmed, so researchers are forced to "grab" their images within a limited window. Observing nanoscale dynamics in living cells for hours requires a different approach.

2. Don't shine light — let the sample glow

In August 2026, a team led by Jian-Dong Feng at Zhejiang University, working with Wei-Song Zhao's group at Harbin Institute of Technology, reported a chemiluminescence-based super-resolution imaging method (RIED), published in the journal Nature. It bypasses the external laser entirely, using the faint photons released by a chemical reaction itself to form images. Without laser illumination there is no phototoxicity, and the probes are not bleached by light.

3. Gathering extremely faint light

Chemiluminescent photons are scarce, so using them directly would be slow and blurry. The team introduced a "spatiotemporal isolated sampling" strategy: collecting each isolated emission efficiently in both time and space, then reconstructing fine structures with super-resolution algorithms. In this way even faint light is put to full use, and resolution reaches the nanoscale.

4. Continuous observation for 41 hours

According to the paper, the technique can observe living cells continuously for about 41 hours while the cells remain healthy and the images stay sharp. By contrast, conventional fluorescence methods often fail within ten to twenty minutes because of bleaching. Long-term, low-damage observation turns processes that could once only be "photographed once" into something closer to a movie.

5. Why it matters

Being able to see nanoscale structures inside living cells for extended periods means researchers can follow organelle movement, material transport and other dynamic processes more completely, giving cell biology, disease research and drug development a new observation tool. Breaking free from the need for light excitation is also seen as a conceptual breakthrough in optical microscopy.

Conclusion

From "shining ever stronger light on the sample" to "letting the sample glow on its own", super-resolution imaging is moving toward a gentler, more lasting approach. Seeing clearly — and seeing long enough — may be what observing living cells truly requires.